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Re: [MiNT] Xaap problem, was termcap problem
No, I do not have the /var/lib/Xapp/fonts.db file, and wishing
will not make it so. It was not written. Any clues on what to do
about that?
In the process of RTFM, I found it would not print neatly, so I
reworked it. I made it narrower, did some formatting, fixed some
typos, fixed maybe two mispellings, and changed what looked like
a German past tense into a English past tense form. Otherwise, I
found it understandable and clearly written.
I am pasting it to this, in case anyone wants it.
<start>
\\ /
\\ / Version 11 Rel. 6.4
/ \\
/ \\ Server for MiNT/GEM
===============================
Sep 05, 2001
Contents
========
1. Requirements
2. Installation
2.1. Preparing Environment
2.2. Preparing Directories
3. Fonts
3.1. Handling of GEM-Fonts
3.2. Font-Aliasing
4. Using The X Server
4.1. Menu Bar Items
4.2. Keyboard Input
4.3. Mouse Actions
1. Requirements
===============
To get the server running with a useable speed, a machine with a
68030 and 10 MByte of Ram is needed at least. Absolutely vital
installed and working system programs are: FreeMiNT >= 1.15.6,
NVDI >= 4.1, N.AES or XaAES or AES 4.1.
If you haven't MiNTnet installed you need a very small package
(I call it 'tiny-sock') from X11.freemint.de installed instead.
Screen size (width*height) isn't restricted, but ST-High (640*400)
is the minimum to get it useable. Nearly all color depths are
supported, except of 2 planes (4 colors) and 15 bit PC format.
The latest binary version can be downloaded from the homepage at
http://X11.freemint.de ,
there is also a source snapshot. The very latest sources are
accessible from the FreeMiNT CVS Repository at
http://wh58-508.st.uni-magdeburg.de/cgi-bin/cvsweb/xg/
Bug reports should be mailed to <AltF4@freemint.de>.
2. Installation
===============
Copy the server's files to some location on your filesystem;
there is no requirement of a fixed path for the server. A
usefull place might be /usr/X11R6/bin/ but everything else
works as well.
The next step is to make a directory /var/lib/Xapp/ for the
server. If the server is started by root at the first time, or
the directory is writeable by the server, it will do the
following steps by itself. Else do the following (as root
user):
cd /var/lib ; mkdir Xapp ; chmod 777 Xapp
2.1. Preparing Environment
--------------------------
There are a few things necessary for X-clients to be able to
work.
If a client starts, it first parses the environment variable
DISPLAY to find out at which IP number the server should be
connected. So it's possible to start clients from connected
machines, having their X-Windows opened on your local machine.
The value of DISPLAY has to be of the form "<server-IP>:0.0".
For clients running at a local machine, DISPLAY contains simply
the value "0:0.0", where the first "0" is simply a shortcut
for the local IP or even "localhost". For clients started on
a remote machine connected to an Atari with e.g. the
IP 123.234.34.56, DISPLAY at the remote machine must be then
"123.234.34.56:0.0".
Most comfortable for the user is, to have somewhere in mint.cnf
the line
setenv DISPLAY 0:0.0
so the setting it can't be forgotten. Otherway it would be
necessary to set it by hand in a shell window and start every
client from that shell.
2.2. Preparing Directories
--------------------------
The following isn't necessary for the server itself but should
be done for client programs to have a common directory hirachy.
First there should be a directory /etc/X11/app-defaults/ which
will later contain default configuration files for several
client programs. These configuration files are such with the
suffix ".ad" in packages and needs to be renamed without the
suffix while copying to the app-defaults e.g. "Xcalc.ad" to
only "Xcalc". Also the X server will search for optional
configuration fileas at /etc/X11/.
Next, a directory /usr/X11R6/ should be created as being the
"XTOPDIR" and a link /usr/X11 pointing to this directory as
well, for historical reasons:
cd /usr ; ln -s X11R6 X11
Furthermore, some clients are looking for their configuration
files not at /etc/X11/app-defaults/, but at
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/ (or at
/usr/X11/lib/X11/app-defaults/, therefor the link) instead,
so there should be placed a link pointing to
/etc/X11/app-defaults/:
cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 ; ln -s /etc/X11/app-defaults
After carrying out all the previous steps, the system should have
these directories and links:
/var/lib/Xapp/
/etc/X11/app-defaults/
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults -> /etc/X11/app-defaults/
/usr/X11 -> X11R6/
3. Fonts
========
In X, fonts are named following the XLFD ('X Logical Font
Description'). These font names are in fact a set of descriptive
fields with '-' as delimiters. The format is as following:
-fndry-fmly-wght-slnt-sWd-adStl-pxSz-ptSz-resx-resy-spc-avgWd
-rgstry-enc
with the field meanings:
fndry: Foundry is the name of the organization that supplied ]
or last modified the font, e.g. Adobe, Bitstream.
fmly: FamilyName of the font, e.g. Courier, Gothic,
Helvetica
wght: WeightName, e.g. Bold, Medim, Black
slnt: Slant, a code-string with tha encoding: "R"=Roman,
"I"=Italic, "O"=Oblique, and so on.
sWd: SetWidth, e.g. Normal, Condensed, Narrow
adStl: AddStyle, e.g. Sans, Serif,
pxSz: PixelSize of the body of the font, similar to the
character cell in VDI
ptSz: PointSize in decipoint, that is 1/10th point
resx,resy: horizontal/vertical resolution for which the font
was designed
spc: Spacing, code-string to indicate the escapement, that
is "P" for proportional and "M" or "C" for monospaced
avgWd: AverageWidth of all characters in 1/20th pixels
rgstry,enc: CharsetRegistry/Encoding, e.g. ISO8859-1
All of these fields my contain wildcards (a '*'). For example,
often clients requests a font named
'-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-ISO8859-1'
which means some font of 12 point height and that charset
encoding is needed, no matter of which family or style and so on.
The server will than take the first font where both criteria
match.
3.1. Handling of GEM-Fonts
--------------------------
At startup, the server parses all fonts provided by the VDI and
translates the available information to XLFD strings. These
are stored in the hash file /var/lib/Xapp/fonts.db to
accelerate further startups.
3.2. Font-Aliasing
------------------
If there exists a file /etc/X11/fonts.alias it will be read at
server startup and later be used to substitute font names from
client requests to fonts the server provides. Have a look at
the server's font hash file at /var/lib/Xapp/fonts.db to see
which fonts are provided by your system. There is also an example
configuration 'fonts.alias.EXMPL' coming along with this file.
The format of the fonts.alias file is very simple, lines
starting with a '!' are comment lines and will be ignored.
The relevant lines are formed the way "foo: bar" and "foo bar"
and means in both cases: "find 'foo' and replace it with 'bar'",
but in different ways. The first form (with the colon) is
used to substitute a _part_ of the font name and the second form
(without colon) is used to substitute the _whole_ font name.
The "foo: bar" form is usefull to replace particular fields of
the fontname, for example the lines
-adobe-: -*-
-courier-: -Courier10Pitch-
would cause that a request for
'-adobe-courier-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'
would be translated to
'-*-Courier10Pitch-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*' which
matches the speedo font from the NVDI package. The field
delimeters '-' should always be used (even if not forced)
to avoid wrong results.
The "foo: bar" form is to substitute the whole font name and will
be done _AFTER_ the part substitution.
There are two often requested pseudo-fonts which should always
be aliased:
fixed: A monospaced font that fits best the system capabilities,
e.g. the font used by the AES, or some other monospaced
font of your choice.
variable: Some proportional font which should be of the same
height as the font used for fixed.
To use the fonts from the NVDI package, it could looks like
fixed -Bitstream-Courier10Pitch-Medium-I-Normal-Serif \
-16-90-0-0-C-70-ISO8859-1
variable -Bitstream-Life-Medium-R-Normal-Serif-16-90-0-0 \
-P-68-ISO8859-1
The font to be substituted can also be a pattern, like
-adobe-times-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1 \
-*-times*-medium-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
-*-Helvetica-Medium-R-Normal--*-120-*-*-*-*-*-* \
-*-gothic*-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*
Please pay attention that the '\' isn't allowed in the
font.alias file; it's only used here for better readability!
Instead both parts have to be in one line, with spaces or tabs
between.
There are other often used font names of the form '9x15',
'6x13' and so on, which means monospaced fonts of
<width> * <height> pixel size. If an request of such a font
name appeares and the server can't find it in its XLFD list
nor in the alias list, it takes a scalable font which can scaled
best to that geometry and creates a generic XLFD entry.
4. Using The X Server
=====================
After been started the X server checks if /dev/xconout2 isn't
locked by some other program and if /usr/X11/bin/xconsole
exists. In this case the latter on is started acts as a
replacement for TosWin2's console window. TosWin2 mustn't be
terminated for having xconsole started, only closing its console
window is enough. Note that also for xconsole the xconout2.xdd
must be installed.
The next step after this is checking if either
/etc/X11/Xmodmap and /usr/X11/bin/xmodmap are existing. In
this case it will be started to apply user defined keyboard
and/or mouse button mappings. For more information see the
example file 'Xmodmap.EXMPL' and the xmodmap manpage.
4.1. Menu Bar Items
-------------------
X11-Server:
About: Views version information.
File:
gwm: Enables/disables the built-in window manager.
In fact, this option controls if X windows have
GEM windgets and decor, or not.
Quit: Quits the X server. If some clients are
connected, a confirmation dialog will appear
first.
Clients: Views a list of all client connections. Selecting
one of the entries while the Control key is held down,
closes down immediately the corresponding connection.
4.2. Keyboard Input
-------------------
In opposite to GEM apllications, every X window gets keyboard
events always and only if it contains the mouse pointer,
independent of the fact which is the top window. This means
that even if some GEM application has some of its wimdows the
top window but the mouse pointer is over an X window, all
keyboard inout will be sent to the latter. On the other hand,
if theX server has one of its windows the top window but the
mouse pointer is somewhere else than over an X window, all
keyboard inputs will be discarded.
Normally the X server does no interpretition of any keyboard
input. There is one exception: The combination
Control-Alt-Backspace causes an immediate server shutdown and
is meant as a "Panic Key".
4.3. Mouse Actions
------------------
X windows can be resized by clicking on the frame around and
dragging to the new size. Some windows may be set to be not
resizeable, this can be overridden by holding down the Control
key. A short mouseclick onto the frame tops/bottoms the
window.
Holding down the Alt key while clicking somewhere inside a
window allows to move it around.
[30]
<end>
--
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